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2018 Exhibitions
In Memoriam: Commemorative Works By Contemporary Artists
Sept 14 – Dec 16, 2018
In Memoriam featured an international selection of contemporary artists who have created commemorative pieces inspired by their personal experiences, beliefs, or concerns; they honor family members and friends, commemorate events with political or social significance, or pay tribute to cultural heroes or mentors.
“These works allow us to explore fundamental questions about the impulse to memorialize individuals or events, and to examine the role of memory and myth, the use of cultural symbols and traditions, and the ways in which these works assert identity and interpret history,” remarked Director and Curator Ann Sievers. In Memoriam is a particularly timely exhibition, as American communities discuss the messages conveyed by public monuments and debate who and what should be commemorated in the public square. The Art Museum will be the sole venue for this exhibition.
Artists featured in the exhibition include:
- Nick Cave, whose sculpture TM13memorializes Trayvon Martin.
- Hank Willis Thomas, whose Raise Up,inspired by a photo from apartheid-era South Africa, led to a second version installed at the new National Memorial for Peace and Justice (Montgomery, Ala.).
- Adel Abidin, whose memory of the 1991 U.S. bombing of Baghdad inspired a haunting video almost two decades later.
- Ann McCoy, who honors Dr. C.A. Meier, the famous Jungian psychologist.
- Jave Yoshimoto, whose 30 ft.-long painting commemorates victims of the 2011 Japanese tsunami.
- Takami Nakamoto & Maurice Mikkers, whose video literally crystallizes Nakamoto’s grief over a lost friend.
- Pepón Osorio, whose A Mis Adorables Hijas(To My Darling Daughters) remembers a Puerto Rican woman who committed suicide in New York.
- Belkis Ramirez, who honors poet Julia de Burgos.
- Yolanda Vásquez Petrocelli, whose prints memorialize her Mexican grandmother.
Vacation Time
June 1 – Aug 19, 2018
Drawn primarily from the Art Museum’s permanent collection, this exhibition is the ultimate staycation. Visit the cathedrals of France, the canals of Venice, and the markets of Morocco without ever leaving Connecticut.
March 23 – May 20, 2018
The prints in this path-breaking exhibition are all from the extensive collection of the now-defunct Polaroid Corporation, which constituted the largest private holding of Paul Caponigro’s work. They cover the years 1959-1968, which was arguably the most prolific decade in Caponigro’s storied career. In addition to fine-art prints, there are rarely-seen test-prints and unique positive-negative pairs that give a sense of Caponigro’s day-to-day work at Polaroid. Throughout, Caponigro’s blend of technical mastery and deep spirituality shines through.
Paul Caponigro (b. 1932) is America’s leading elder statesman of landscape and still life photography. His work completes an arc of black and white photography begun by Alfred Stieglitz and Paul Strand and continuing through Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, and Minor White, who was Caponigro’s principal mentor and teacher.
Caponigro first worked as a photographer during his army service from 1952-55, during which he was stationed at San Francisco’s Presidio. His post-army years were a flurry of productive cross-country travel with fellow photographers, culminating in 1958 in his first one-man show, “In the Presence Of,” at the George Eastman House in Rochester.
In 1960, Caponigro relocated to Boston where he taught for a time at Boston University’s school of journalism. Ansel Adams introduced Caponigro to the Boston-based Polaroid Corporation where Adams himself was a consultant, and thus began a fruitful multi-year collaboration between Caponigro and Polaroid. For several days each month, Caponigro tested each new Polaroid black-and-white film product and camera and provided technical feedback on behalf of the community of fine-art photographers. This consultancy allowed Caponigro to give up commercial work and to devote himself full time to art photography.
This exhibition was organized by art2art Circulating Exhibitions.
Relief Work: Woodcuts, Wood Engravings, And Linocuts
Jan. 15 – March 11, 2018
This survey includes works ranging from the 16th century to the present and been drawn from the permanent collection of the Art Museum, USJ. It consists of more than 30 works of art, including:
- Woodcuts from Albrecht Dürer’s Life of the Virgin (1511).
- American 19th-century wood engravings for Harper’s Weekly by Winslow Homer
- Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints by Hiroshige and Kunisada
- Contemporary color prints by Karen Kunc and Robert Cottingham
- and more